Building Sites that Generate Leads, and Lots of Them

Chicago Web Designers Who Know Marketing Inside-Out

Having a beautiful website is a good start … but it’s only a start. A world-class site also needs to be solidly built and marketable. For years, we’ve created sites for Chicago-area companies that don’t just look good, they do something – specifically, drive traffic that converts into sales leads. A lead generation website from Straight North has not only beauty but also brains.

Why Our Sites Generate Leads

Slick designs in and of themselves don’t motivate visitors to take action. Perhaps just as important, a creative design by itself doesn’t make your site become visible on Google and Bing for organic search. A Straight North site will motivate visitors and improve your SEO. Here’s why:

Responsive Web Design. Your site adjusts automatically for optimal display on desktops, tablets and smartphones. Responsive Web design is a cornerstone of all our Chicago website design, because of the explosion in the use of small screens to access the Internet. If your site displays poorly to small-screen users, you miss out on hundreds or thousands of opportunities to secure new leads every month or every week.

SEO Expertise. Our agency has a large staff of SEO specialists and SEO-savvy developers who build solid SEO functionality into your site. This is a skill many design firms lack, but is essential if you want your site to be visible to people on Google and Bing who are looking for the products and services you sell, but don’t know who you are. Key SEO work on your site includes extensive keyword research, title tag and description tag optimization, and internal linking structure design. All of these (and more) are essential for Google and Bing to read and rank your site’s content.

Copywriting. We have B2B and B2C copywriters on staff, experienced in writing copy that is scannable and persuasive – key attributes of effective website content. Content development is frequently a bottleneck in Web design projects, but our depth of writing resources helps keep your project on schedule or ahead of schedule.

User Experience (UX). Our designers understand best practices for optimizing user experience on your site. This enables visitors to quickly find the information they need, and quickly understand what they find. A strong user experience keeps visitors on your site, and brings them back.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO). Designing sites that persuade passive visitors to take action and become sales leads is an art. CRO can be as big a decision as where on the page to place your offer, or as small as what color to make the call-to-action button. Our designers apply CRO best practices to your page designs, allowing visitors to easily identify calls to action (e.g., download a brochure, call for an appointment) and eager to take advantage of them.

Development Expertise. Your site’s interior “plumbing” works properly, reducing downtime, malfunctions and user errors that drive visitors (and sales leads) into the arms of your competitors. In addition, your pages are designed and built to load quickly – a key factor for positive user experience as well as a big consideration for SEO.

Lead Tracking. Your site is configured to track the source of all leads that come through it, including form submissions and phone calls. Because you know from where your leads are coming, you know where to increase your online marketing investment, and where not to. Without accurate lead tracking, your Internet marketing strategy can never be more than educated guesswork.

Drupal Platform. Your site is built in Drupal, one of the most popular and well-supported open source CMS platforms in the world. With Drupal, making most site updates and adding content after launch are easy, plus an almost unlimited selection of modules are available to add functionality to your site as time goes on. Drupal sites are eminently scalable, reliable, SEO-friendly and efficient to maintain.

Turn Your Site into a Sales Force

Having a well-designed lead generation site is like giving your Chicago business a new sales force. With over 60 full-time, in-house employees, we have the depth and breadth of expertise in design, development, content and marketing to create a site that keeps your lead pipeline flowing – and growing. Lead generation expertise is what makes us the Chicago Web design company that helps build your business, not just your site.